Work Text:
“Who’s there?!”
“French Revolution!”
It all went more chaotically than Enjolras would have wished.
The sounds were deafening. The children of the barricade were unaccustomed to the gunshots fired so near, unaccustomed to the recoil, to the killing. The barricade was strong yet a challenge for keeping balance on, the descending twilight made it harder to aim, the fear made it harder to pull the trigger. Bravely though they fought, they were not, apart from Enjolras, perhaps, ready to die, and their minds quickly turned wild, their movements rather disorderly. Amongst the cries and yells and shots and hits and breaking of the barricade, there was a lot of shuffling and pushing around as people struggled to find their place in the scene, the best place to shoot while remaining safe. At some point Enjolras was shoved harshly and so suddenly that he lost his balance, hearing another gunshot dangerously close to himself as he hung on to the barricade, but in a matter of moments he was back on his feet, finding himself again in the heat of the battle.
“What were you thinking, Marius, you could have got us all killed! My life is not yours to risk, Marius!”
The terrifying sight of their friend holding a torch so close to the barrel was one of the instants that made Enjolras wonder if this was how it all was to end. Would it have been worth it? Would it be honorable, to die like that?
The leader gave away the torch after confiscating it safely from Marius. Him, Combeferre and Feuilly were planning for the nearest future, not so much looking at all the victims of the attack which were attended to in grieving silence. They would need more gunpowder, repair the damages done to the barricade by the guards and-
“Enjolras!” a loud cry reached him, from a man whose voice Enjolras would never have imagined sounding desperate.
Bossuet.
Perhaps it was for the tremble with which he cried, perhaps for the loudness which suggested alarm, but the leader turned around instantly, eyes searching for the source of the sound from under the frown.
At the very edge of the barricade, he managed to distinguish in the shadows, highlighted faintly by the flickering light of the fire-pot, a small gathering of people who stood strangely still in a sort of circle, one of them kneeling. He was soon to realise it was somebody they were gathering around, as he seemed to spot legs sprawled on the blood-stained cobblestone. Bossuet was the only one turned to him, distress on his face and intention and urgency in his eyes, and as soon as their gazes met he shouted “Come here, quickly!”, waving his hand almost frantically.
With a firm step he walked over to them, advancing the pace as if by intuition, a bad gut feeling. Noticing him approaching, the murmuring students had suddenly gone very quiet, moving to let the leader in, and Enjolras saw Grantaire.
He was pale, even in the dim light. His body looked soft and weak, his back leaning on some wooden planks inclined over broken furniture and head resting powerlessly on it. On his chest, rising and falling intermittently in shaky breaths, a rose bloomed, soaking his shirt in horrifying bright red. His arm was draped over his stomach, fingers grabbing on the brim of his waistcoat, but his face was devoid of nervousness or wide-eyed panic. Instead, his eyes were unusually, eerily indifferent, if a little saddened.
Joly was crouching next to him, yet he was as still as the people who stood around the wounded cynic: Bossuet, Prouvaire, Courfeyrac, Marius silently looked down at him with gravely pursed lips and clutched caps in the hands locked stiffly in front of them; fighting fiercely to stay strong at such a heartbreaking sight. Éponine stood right by Grantaire’s side, little Gavroche clinging to her and peeking hesitantly. She was crying, with tears so heartfelt it was plain she and Grantaire were close. Enjolras knew the two of them bonded over a shared sorrow, though he never learned more than that. He had no time for such trivialities.
Now, at this very moment, it seemed, time had stopped completely, and yet simultaneously he felt like time was mercilessly running out, and there would never be enough of it.
His eyes met Grantaire’s, and his scowl deepened.
“He must be attended to, let’s get him inside,” he directed with a commanding voice, himself already taking a step.
But Joly didn’t move. He only looked up at Enjolras gloomily. In fact, nobody moved.
And Enjolras understood.
For a moment, he froze, gazing at Joly as if waiting for him to say there still was hope, but he did not, pursing his lips at the leader’s concerned frown.
Having glanced briefly at Éponine and the streams of tears flowing down her face as she covered her mouth, muffling the quiet sobs, Enjolras sighed, lowering next to Grantaire. Joly, although he was on the other side of the cynic, backed away a bit.
It seemed like Grantaire was torn between the reluctance to look at Enjolras and the inability to look away from him. Barely perceptibly, he shrugged, it causing him visible pain.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “We all knew this was how it was going to end.”
The words were almost nonchalant in Grantaire’s classical manner, but unlike the usual effect of this tone which sounded at the meetings, it didn’t ease the atmosphere. None of the present smiled, and even the cynic himself could only manage a bittersweet quirk of pain-strained lips. His voice was small and broken, hardly more than a breath.
“I do not understand,” Enjolras shook his head, eyes narrowing slightly in confusion. “I thought you stayed at the cafe, you didn’t-”
“He saved your life, Enjolras,” Éponine spat in her struggle, nearly choking on her tears. There seemed to be a note of anger to the way she said it.
It silenced him instantly.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” sighed Grantaire tiredly, hiding his gaze from him as he glanced at her. “Couldn’t you have waited five minutes?”
Stricken, Enjolras stared at him, but it didn’t take him long to realise. That sudden shove quickly came back to his mind.
“That was you?”
Grantaire didn’t reply, bringing to the man a look which he wasn’t able to read. It was a simple look, and yet very mixed still. There was an emotion in it that was gradually fading, along with the clearness of his eyes.
Enjolras hung his head, running a hand over his face and heaving a burdened sigh. He wanted to speak, but his throat was suddenly tied in a suffocating knot.
“Would you permit me one last impertinence?” Grantaire said suddenly. When the man looked up at him, his gaze was gentle. “A trifle. Can hardly refuse a dying man a trifle, can you?”
Looking at him for a few moments, Enjolras eventually nodded.
Still, it took the cynic a moment of hesitancy before he reached for Enjolras’ hand with his own pale, trembling, blood- and gunpowder-stained one. For the first time since the beginning of their long, turbulent acquaintanceship, the leader did not resist him, did not evade or reject him. He watched with tension clutching at his heart, one he could not afford to display, as Grantaire was slowly bringing his hand close to himself, but failed to conceal astonishment, his frown vanishing, when he felt the touch of Grantaire’s lips on his fingers.
The touch was light. It was soft, long, very careful and tender, like every glance that the cynic darted at him when he wasn’t looking. It was also dreadfully cold. Grantaire’s other hand rose effortfully to lay a palm at the back of Enjolras’; it seemed he was cupping it as if shielding a beautiful little bird from harsh winds. His eyes fell close for that intimate, brittle moment, with a sentiment of a believer kissing a cross.
None said a word at this tragic sight. None gasped. None even moved, seemingly becoming even more still than they were already. None widened their eyes, apart from Enjolras. He was the only one not apprised of a knowledge that everyone else possessed by mere attentiveness.
It was unsettlingly silent.
Grantaire lowered the leader’s hand, laying it onto his chest. Not on the wound, the spring of ugly redness, but a little higher from it. Where his heart was.
His eyes fluttered open, though now even more feeble, and smiled faintly at the marble-faced man before him.
“Thank you,” he said softly.
Enjolras never looked away from him, his eyes slightly glistening with tears and anger. This anger was not directed at Grantaire, no. It was directed at this. The world. The cruelty. The Fate. The harshness and ruthlessness of all of them not dying together in the heat of the battle, when agitation and chaos would rid them from the heartbreak of watching their friends die in dead silence, instead sweeping them like a wave into a stormy sea of violence and drowning them in it without ever being made aware of the others’ ends, and even if, it wouldn’t have mattered whatsoever, because their ends would have been identical, which would be somewhat comforting. They would be dying together and for their cause.
Grantaire was not dying for their cause.
Grantaire was dying for him.
It was about then that the bastion which was Enjolras’ composure finally succumbed to the blows that the view before him was dealing to it. That leader’s steel stoicism and bearing, always rigid, never wavering, had at last yielded.
He cupped Grantaire’s face with his other hand, and, rising a little, leaned in to press his lips against his.
This kiss was not gentle, like Grantaire’s. It was careful, as if not to hurt the man more in some way, but that was where the lightness ended. It was intense, nearly bordering on roughness, it was ardent and oh so desperate, as if Enjolras endeavoured to share some of his own life with him, some of his endless passion and resilience so that the man may step onto the path of recovering. But of course, he couldn’t.
Enjolras parted their lips, although did not pull away, with a heavy sigh and a tortured gaze which met Grantaire’s ever so slightly widened one. In his eyes there flashed a sparkle of animation that looked almost incompatible with his terribly pale face and freezing hands, and for a moment, there also flashed something serious, though it passed fleetingly. Enjolras knew what it was. At any other moment of their lives, Grantaire would have doubted him, said something along the lines of “Do not pity me so” or “You needn’t have”, but at this very minute, he said nothing of the sort, not when there was so little time. Instead, he breathed:
“You loved me..?”
Enjolras grasped tighter their blood-stained hands that laid on his chest.
“I did,” he replied earnestly, in a way that only Grantaire could hear. Their noses brushed gently together. “For a long time.”
It wasn’t nearly close to what he wished to say, but it was all he managed to.
Nevertheless, Grantaire bloomed in a smile, his widest one yet despite all the suffering he was still fighting against.
“Good God, Enjolras,” he said barely audibly in a shaky breath. His eyes were overflowing with affection, the kind that one gazes with at a moment of farewell. Yet he looked truly happy. “I think you’ve just saved my soul. I am no longer afraid to die.”
Enjolras knew it wasn’t true. And he could not, no matter how much he forced himself, return his smile. But Grantaire, he was certain, would expect him to.
He leaned in again.
This time, it was soft, and Grantaire would have sworn this was the most tender kiss he ever received in his life. Yet the lightness of the touch had by no means made it less profound. It was most sincere, wholehearted and loving of kisses, full of warmth and devotion. A blissfully long kiss goodnight.
Grantaire did not open his eyes when Enjolras pulled back. Everything about him had gone moveless, apart from a single tear that, having fallen from Enjolras’ eye, was now rolling down his cheek.
The man could not bear looking at him for more than a couple of moments. He hung his head grievingly. Not wailing, not sobbing. Only his slightly trembling frame betrayed the effort restraining the surfacing of his anguish took him.
Slowly lifting a lifeless hand off the man’s chest, he brought it to his lips and planted a gentle kiss on its back before bending down and leaning his forehead against Grantaire’s collarbone.
He must have sat there for a long while, for eventually, sounds began returning to the dead-silent street. At first, those weren’t words or even voices, but the shuffling of feet and fabric, the quiet sounds accompanying any human movement. He felt warm hands curling softly around his wrists and elbows, arms that with careful insistence pulled him away from Grantaire. He saw Grantaire treated with the same caring attentiveness.
He helped them carry him to the rest of the victims.
The children of the barricade had gone to try and get some rest. Right atop the broken chairs and tables and on the ground, against the cold walls and closed doors, the warriors of freedom laid with their eyes closed, fallen into a dreamless sleep. Only the chief, the guide and the centre remained longer awake, with the former speaking mostly.
“...thus, we should be able to change the guns quicker. That was one of our faults today,” Enjolras was saying in the usual firm voice. “But, we must rest now… Courfeyrac, you take the watch. They may attack before it’s light.”
Courfeyrac didn’t nod. He only held on to Enjolras’ gaze that he, for the first time since the start of the conversation, lifted up, and there was as much compassion as there was grief in his kind eyes.
The leader, pretending to still expect a confirmation of the plans from the other, only broke free of Courfeyrac’s dangerously vulnerable look after feeling a hand laid on his shoulder. He turned to see Combeferre bearing exactly the same bare emotion in his eyes.
For a brief while, Enjolras moved his gaze between him and Courfeyrac slowly.
And then, as his head fell into his hand, concealing his face, he was immediately enclosed, pulled into a tight embrace.